Associate Professor Katja Valaskivi heads the Helsinki Research Hub on Religion, Media and Social Change (Heremes) and is a director in the datafication research programme at Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities (HSSH). She specializes in datafication and mediatization of religions, belief systems, worldwiews and ideologies and has developed multi-method approaches for the study of  disruptive, hybrid media events such as terror attacks and natural disasters. Valaskivi is currently the PI in research projects on mediatized religious populism, politics of conspiracy theories as well as the circulation of extremism in the dark web and beyond. She co-chairs the Nordic Network on Religion, Media and Populism (Norempo) and is Advisory Board member in the International Society of Media, Religion and Culture (ISMRC). Valaskivi has recently been tenured and will start as the Professor on Religious Studies and Media Research at the University of Helsinki on Sept 1, 2022.